Not that I'm aware of, take it as an opportunity to learn something even if it's something you ultimately don't agree with. You may learn something about yourself.
No, actually, my statements mirror exactly his sentiments. He may not like my wording of them (few people do care to have their words re-phrased or repurposed by others), but it is accurate.
Completely untrue.
So tell me what his solution is for the problem that is the US Media?
His solution is that decisions for the media should be based entirely by people. That no one should be ahead of anyone else in the decision making process. That media should be a positive freedom, and if you or I wanted to produce a video for a television station we would be able to.
As well as give/loan resources for people to produce their own content as they wish. There might be certain limits on the fringe, but would need to be decided by the group.
So let me repeat: Chomsky's vision for America is vividly captured by the action of his fellow psychotic and fan, Hugo Chavez, in Venezuela, shutting down and seizing media that disagree with him.
That's not true, here's an article with Chomsky discussing the problems.
Where did you go to school? I didn't know Wikipedia had a degree program.
Another way to marginalize the opposition. There is absolutely nothing in the affairs of life that requires a degree. All it requires is some basic reasoning, and the will do to the research.
There isn't anything in what we are talking about that a 12 year old would have trouble understanding.
Is it easier just to contradict everything I say, adding nothing to the conversation?
When you say the exact opposite of the truth, I gain that you are either purposely stating what you know to be wrong, or are making up what you think he believes in based on other people.
Either way, you need to do your own research and make up your own minds. It isn't even difficult, his wikipedia article, and wikipedia quotes does far more of a research job than it would take to correct your views.
But I did add to the conversation. His view was the exact opposite of what you said. You can find this out yourself via your own research which if you have any credibility whatsoever you will attend to before making those statements again.
THE history of human growth and development is at the same time the history of the terrible struggle of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn. In its tenacious hold on tradition, the Old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and cruelest means to stay the advent of the New, in whatever form or period the latter may have asserted itself. Nor need we retrace our steps into the distant past to realize the enormity of opposition, difficulties, and hardships placed in the path of every progressive idea. The rack, the thumbscrew, and the knout are still with us; so are the convict's garb and the social wrath, all conspiring against the spirit that is serenely marching on.
Anarchism could not hope to escape the fate of all other ideas of innovation. Indeed, as the most revolutionary and uncompromising innovator, Anarchism must needs meet with the combined ignorance and venom of the world it aims to reconstruct.
To deal even remotely with all that is being said and done against Anarchism would necessitate the writing of a whole volume. I shall therefore meet only two of the principal objections. In so doing, I shall attempt to elucidate what Anarchism really stands for.
The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism is that it brings to light the relation between so-called intelligence and ignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider the relativity of all things. The ignorant mass has in its favor that it makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it always does, by mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child. "Why?" "Because." Yet the opposition of the uneducated to Anarchism deserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man.
What, then, are the objections? First, Anarchism is impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, Anarchism stands for violence and destruction, hence it must be repudiated as vile and dangerous. Both the intelligent man and the ignorant mass judge not from a thorough knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or false interpretation.
A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life. In the light of this conception, Anarchism is indeed practical. More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining new life.
The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child,--a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence.
Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature's forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that feed on the life's essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit.
Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some
And as a pretty reliable rule of thumb anyone who speaks well of Chomsky isn't someone with a well developed moral compass or very knowledgable on political issues. Most often a slacker college student.
Great way to marginalize those you disagree with.
I tell people to read the opposition. If someone agrees with something, I analyze the statements.
You attack the person to discourage people from listening, speaking up, etc.
No, he is in favor of more regulation because that is the only solution for his criticism of the free media in the United States.
False. That is not his view.
He is critical of people doing/watching/producing what they want to produce because he thinks the masses are stupid and are being manipulated by corporate-totaltarianism.
The exact opposite of his view.
Anything that doesn't agree with him exists because of this vast conspiracy - he's no different from any paranoid nut off his meds.
It sure is easier to smear people than discuss the topics intelligently, huh?
Chomsky describes himself as a "a libertarian socialist", whatever that means.
If you don't intend to know the history, or the definition of a word then why even discuss it?
I'm a libertarian socialist. It used to be called Libertarian, and still is everywhere in the world aside from America.
He's one of those guys that heavily criticizes the USA, but still seems to admire it.
What does that even mean without citing an example? He admires the workers movements, the protesting and fighting for the rights you and I enjoy today. You criticize something because it's wrong. That's a different thing than what you admire.
As for free speech, he refuses to even take legal action when someone libels him, so I'd say he favors free speech.
There's something that is correct. He is for positive free speech as opposed to just negative free speech. Meaning everyone including those you hate should be enabled to speak. Not just prevented from it.
Even after being aware of him since my teens, sometimes I'm still not sure what to make of the guy.
Try understanding what he is saying, and it may make more sense to you.
Not quite imho, career politicians almost need to be sellout to get elected. They care much more about power and influence and votes than anything else. Still even with such moderations tons of downright horrid laws and policies get passed as a result of the ideologue tendencies in them.
If you are a career politician, then you have already internalized many values taught to you by schools, and your environment.
And "ideologue tendencies" have nothing to do with it. You only get to be in power if you sufficiently take care of your corporate masters. You wouldn't even be in the group of "career politicians" if you didn't.
No, we don't have to choose a ideologue. Choosing such people usually results in long bloody civil wars, genocides, bloody power struggler, incompetence, even more incompetence, horribly badly designed programs, horribly badly designed laws, ego trips by politicians and finally a return to something even worse than where we started. Anyone who believes they are "right" period can never be trusted. Blind change is worse than no change.
And Chomsky doesn't believe he is "right" period. And others do not either. And no one is talking about blind change.
So you manage to connect Chomsky to bloody civil wars, and genocide with no basis. Where is the value in what you are saying at all?
The problem is that Chomsky is just another ideologue, and you can't trust ANYTHING from an ideologue no matter how smart they are (or manage to seem). I even agree with his basic view here, but I wouldn't trust him as a reference.
The problem with the parent is that he is just another slashdot poster, and you can't trust ANYTHING from a slashdot poster no matter how smart they are (or manage to seem). I even agree with his basic view here, but I wouldn't trust him as a reference.
ps. If you don't understand my point, it's that I think the parent is using a method of marginalization of opinion. All that matters is the content, and what you think about it. Who says it is irrelevant. What matters is, is it right?
Part of the reason why I write about the media is because I am interested in the whole intellectual culture, and the part of it that is easiest to study is the media. It comes out every day. You can do a systematic investigation. You can compare yesterday's version to today's version. There is a lot of evidence about what's played up and what isn't and the way things are structured.
My impression is the media aren't very different from scholarship or from, say, journals of intellectual opinion--there are some extra constraints--but it's not radically different. They interact, which is why people go up and back quite easily among them.
You look at the media, or at any institution you want to understand. You ask questions about its internal institutional structure. You want to know something about their setting in the broader society. How do they relate to other systems of power and authority? If you're lucky, there is an internal record from leading people in the information system which tells you what they are up to (it is sort of a doctrinal system). That doesn't mean the public relations handouts but what they say to each other about what they are up to. There is quite a lot of interesting documentation.
Those are three major sources of information about the nature of the media. You want to study them the way, say, a scientist would study some complex molecule or something. You take a look at the structure and then make some hypothesis based on the structure as to what the media product is likely to look like. Then you investigate the media product and see how well it conforms to the hypotheses. Virtually all work in media analysis is this last part--trying to study carefully just what the media product is and whether it conforms to obvious assumptions about the nature and structure of the media.
Well, what do you find? First of all, you find that there are different media which do different things, like the entertainment/Hollywood, soap operas, and so on, or even most of the newspapers in the country (the overwhelming majority of them). They are directing the mass audience.
There is another sector of the media, the elite media, sometimes called the agenda-setting media because they are the ones with the big resources, they set the framework in which everyone else operates. The New York Times and CBS, that kind of thing. Their audience is mostly privileged people. The people who read the New York Times--people who are wealthy or part of what is sometimes called the political class--they are actually involved in the political system in an ongoing fashion. They are basically managers of one sort or another. They can be political managers, business managers (like corporate executives or that sort of thing), doctoral managers (like university professors), or other journalists who are involved in organizing the way people think and look at things.
The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching the Associated Press, who grind out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says "Notice to Editors: Tomorrow's New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page." The point of that is, if you're an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don't have the resources to figure out what the news is, or you don't want to think about it anyway, this tells you what the news is. These are the stories for the quarter page that you are going to devote to something other than local affairs or diverting your audience. These are the stories that you put there because that's what the New York Times tells us is what you're supposed to care about tomorrow. If you
Published on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 by The International News Starving The Poor by Noam Chomsky
The chaos that derives from the so-called international order can be painful if you are on the receiving end of the power that determines that order's structure. Even tortillas come into play in the ungrand scheme of things. Recently, in many regions of Mexico, tortilla prices jumped by more than 50 per cent.
In January, in Mexico City, tens of thousands of workers and farmers rallied in the Zocalo, the city's central square, to protest the skyrocketing cost of tortillas.
In response, the government of President Felipe Calderon cut a deal with Mexican producers and retailers to limit the price of tortillas and corn flour, very likely a temporary expedient.
In part the price-hike threat to the food staple for Mexican workers and the poor is what we might call the ethanol effect -- a consequence of the US stampede to corn-based ethanol as an energy substitute for oil, whose major wellsprings, of course, are in regions that even more grievously defy international order.
In the United States, too, the ethanol effect has raised food prices over a broad range, including other crops, livestock and poultry.
The connection between instability in the Middle East and the cost of feeding a family in the Americas isn't direct, of course. But as with all international trade, power tilts the balance. A leading goal of US foreign policy has long been to create a global order in which US corporations have free access to markets, resources and investment opportunities. The objective is commonly called "free trade," a posture that collapses quickly on examination.
It's not unlike what Britain, a predecessor in world domination, imagined during the latter part of the 19th century, when it embraced free trade, after 150 years of state intervention and violence had helped the nation achieve far greater industrial power than any rival.
The United States has followed much the same pattern. Generally, great powers are willing to enter into some limited degree of free trade when they're convinced that the economic interests under their protection are going to do well. That has been, and remains, a primary feature of the international order.
The ethanol boom fits the pattern. As discussed by agricultural economists C Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, "the biofuel industry has long been dominated not by market forces but by politics and the interests of a few large companies," in large part Archer Daniels Midland, the major ethanol producer. Ethanol production is feasible thanks to substantial state subsidies and very high tariffs to exclude much cheaper and more efficient sugar-based Brazilian ethanol. In March, during President Bush's trip to Latin America, the one heralded achievement was a deal with Brazil on joint production of ethanol. But Bush, while spouting free-trade rhetoric for others in the conventional manner, emphasized forcefully that the high tariff to protect US producers would remain, of course along with the many forms of government subsidy for the industry.
Despite the huge, taxpayer-supported agricultural subsidies, the prices of corn -- and tortillas -- have been climbing rapidly. One factor is that industrial users of imported US corn increasingly purchase cheaper Mexican varieties used for tortillas, raising prices.
The 1994 US-sponsored NAFTA agreement may also play a significant role, one that is likely to increase. An unlevel-playing-field impact of NAFTA was to flood Mexico with highly subsidised agribusiness exports, driving Mexican producers off the land.
Mexican economist Carlos Salas reviews data showing that after a steady rise until 1993, agricultural employment began to decline when NAFTA came into force, primarily among corn producers -- a direct consequence of NAFTA, he and other economists conclude. One-sixth of the Mexican agricultural
Obviously it has nothing to do with terrorism, or terroristic.
Unless the targets he planned on shooting were to urge a political change. Or he told the paper targets before hand that he was coming to get them unless they used recyclable paper.
Maybe the person who told on him wasn't actually a person, but instead of a picture of Osama Bin Laden with a bullseye over the nose.
That's weird. I know people in China, and they are considered quite wealthy with government jobs, and they pull in 7k a year. They don't seem particularly well off to me. Maybe that's a big step below.
I'm a sports game fan, and all of the sports games look pretty bad for it. I think Puzzle Quest will be the first game I go out and get, it looks fun.
The only one on your list I might get otherwise is Ratchet and Clank, and that's solely because of the good rating from IGN. I've never played it before, and am generally not into those games, but it will be better than anything else i have on there.
I just started adding RSS feeds, and videos, so I'll probably get much more use out of it now. Just needed a reason, and my first post started it.
I have a PSP. I've used it one time when I got it in another state, and used it during the flight.
And that was when I wasn't using my IPOD. I have movies which I've watched already, and a few games that suck.
What am I supposed to do with this thing? I don't really care to learn the ins and outs of firmware, but playing old PS games would be awesome. I might actually use it then, so how do I go about figuring that out?
It just sits there. I have money to buy games, but nothing looks remotely good.
Slashdot Mirror
Did I run over your dog or something?
Not that I'm aware of, take it as an opportunity to learn something even if it's something you ultimately don't agree with. You may learn something about yourself.
So you are 8?
And that's where we'll end it, thank you for adding misinformation to the discussion.
No, actually, my statements mirror exactly his sentiments. He may not like my wording of them (few people do care to have their words re-phrased or repurposed by others), but it is accurate.
Completely untrue.
So tell me what his solution is for the problem that is the US Media?
His solution is that decisions for the media should be based entirely by people. That no one should be ahead of anyone else in the decision making process. That media should be a positive freedom, and if you or I wanted to produce a video for a television station we would be able to.
As well as give/loan resources for people to produce their own content as they wish. There might be certain limits on the fringe, but would need to be decided by the group.
So let me repeat: Chomsky's vision for America is vividly captured by the action of his fellow psychotic and fan, Hugo Chavez, in Venezuela, shutting down and seizing media that disagree with him.
That's not true, here's an article with Chomsky discussing the problems.
Where did you go to school? I didn't know Wikipedia had a degree program.
Another way to marginalize the opposition. There is absolutely nothing in the affairs of life that requires a degree. All it requires is some basic reasoning, and the will do to the research.
There isn't anything in what we are talking about that a 12 year old would have trouble understanding.
Is it easier just to contradict everything I say, adding nothing to the conversation?
When you say the exact opposite of the truth, I gain that you are either purposely stating what you know to be wrong, or are making up what you think he believes in based on other people.
Either way, you need to do your own research and make up your own minds. It isn't even difficult, his wikipedia article, and wikipedia quotes does far more of a research job than it would take to correct your views.
But I did add to the conversation. His view was the exact opposite of what you said. You can find this out yourself via your own research which if you have any credibility whatsoever you will attend to before making those statements again.
Perhaps Emma Goldman would do well?
THE history of human growth and development is at the same time the history of the terrible struggle of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn. In its tenacious hold on tradition, the Old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and cruelest means to stay the advent of the New, in whatever form or period the latter may have asserted itself. Nor need we retrace our steps into the distant past to realize the enormity of opposition, difficulties, and hardships placed in the path of every progressive idea. The rack, the thumbscrew, and the knout are still with us; so are the convict's garb and the social wrath, all conspiring against the spirit that is serenely marching on.
Anarchism could not hope to escape the fate of all other ideas of innovation. Indeed, as the most revolutionary and uncompromising innovator, Anarchism must needs meet with the combined ignorance and venom of the world it aims to reconstruct.
To deal even remotely with all that is being said and done against Anarchism would necessitate the writing of a whole volume. I shall therefore meet only two of the principal objections. In so doing, I shall attempt to elucidate what Anarchism really stands for.
The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism is that it brings to light the relation between so-called intelligence and ignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider the relativity of all things. The ignorant mass has in its favor that it makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it always does, by mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child. "Why?" "Because." Yet the opposition of the uneducated to Anarchism deserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man.
What, then, are the objections? First, Anarchism is impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, Anarchism stands for violence and destruction, hence it must be repudiated as vile and dangerous. Both the intelligent man and the ignorant mass judge not from a thorough knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or false interpretation.
A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life. In the light of this conception, Anarchism is indeed practical. More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining new life.
The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child,--a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence.
Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature's forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that feed on the life's essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit.
Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some
And as a pretty reliable rule of thumb anyone who speaks well of Chomsky isn't someone with a well developed moral compass or very knowledgable on political issues. Most often a slacker college student.
Great way to marginalize those you disagree with.
I tell people to read the opposition. If someone agrees with something, I analyze the statements.
You attack the person to discourage people from listening, speaking up, etc.
Disgusting.
Finally someone that stated it correct. Bravo.
No, he is in favor of more regulation because that is the only solution for his criticism of the free media in the United States.
False. That is not his view.
He is critical of people doing/watching/producing what they want to produce because he thinks the masses are stupid and are being manipulated by corporate-totaltarianism.
The exact opposite of his view.
Anything that doesn't agree with him exists because of this vast conspiracy - he's no different from any paranoid nut off his meds.
It sure is easier to smear people than discuss the topics intelligently, huh?
Chomsky describes himself as a "a libertarian socialist", whatever that means.
If you don't intend to know the history, or the definition of a word then why even discuss it?
I'm a libertarian socialist. It used to be called Libertarian, and still is everywhere in the world aside from America.
He's one of those guys that heavily criticizes the USA, but still seems to admire it.
What does that even mean without citing an example? He admires the workers movements, the protesting and fighting for the rights you and I enjoy today. You criticize something because it's wrong. That's a different thing than what you admire.
As for free speech, he refuses to even take legal action when someone libels him, so I'd say he favors free speech.
There's something that is correct. He is for positive free speech as opposed to just negative free speech. Meaning everyone including those you hate should be enabled to speak. Not just prevented from it.
Even after being aware of him since my teens, sometimes I'm still not sure what to make of the guy.
Try understanding what he is saying, and it may make more sense to you.
Not quite imho, career politicians almost need to be sellout to get elected. They care much more about power and influence and votes than anything else. Still even with such moderations tons of downright horrid laws and policies get passed as a result of the ideologue tendencies in them.
If you are a career politician, then you have already internalized many values taught to you by schools, and your environment.
And "ideologue tendencies" have nothing to do with it. You only get to be in power if you sufficiently take care of your corporate masters. You wouldn't even be in the group of "career politicians" if you didn't.
No, we don't have to choose a ideologue. Choosing such people usually results in long bloody civil wars, genocides, bloody power struggler, incompetence, even more incompetence, horribly badly designed programs, horribly badly designed laws, ego trips by politicians and finally a return to something even worse than where we started.
Anyone who believes they are "right" period can never be trusted. Blind change is worse than no change.
And Chomsky doesn't believe he is "right" period. And others do not either. And no one is talking about blind change.
So you manage to connect Chomsky to bloody civil wars, and genocide with no basis. Where is the value in what you are saying at all?
The problem is that Chomsky is just another ideologue, and you can't trust ANYTHING from an ideologue no matter how smart they are (or manage to seem). I even agree with his basic view here, but I wouldn't trust him as a reference.
The problem with the parent is that he is just another slashdot poster, and you can't trust ANYTHING from a slashdot poster no matter how smart they are (or manage to seem). I even agree with his basic view here, but I wouldn't trust him as a reference.
ps. If you don't understand my point, it's that I think the parent is using a method of marginalization of opinion. All that matters is the content, and what you think about it. Who says it is irrelevant. What matters is, is it right?
What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream
From a talk at Z Media Institute June 1997
By Noam Chomsky
Part of the reason why I write about the media is because I am interested in the whole intellectual culture, and the part of it that is easiest to study is the media. It comes out every day. You can do a systematic investigation. You can compare yesterday's version to today's version. There is a lot of evidence about what's played up and what isn't and the way things are structured.
My impression is the media aren't very different from scholarship or from, say, journals of intellectual opinion--there are some extra constraints--but it's not radically different. They interact, which is why people go up and back quite easily among them.
You look at the media, or at any institution you want to understand. You ask questions about its internal institutional structure. You want to know something about their setting in the broader society. How do they relate to other systems of power and authority? If you're lucky, there is an internal record from leading people in the information system which tells you what they are up to (it is sort of a doctrinal system). That doesn't mean the public relations handouts but what they say to each other about what they are up to. There is quite a lot of interesting documentation.
Those are three major sources of information about the nature of the media. You want to study them the way, say, a scientist would study some complex molecule or something. You take a look at the structure and then make some hypothesis based on the structure as to what the media product is likely to look like. Then you investigate the media product and see how well it conforms to the hypotheses. Virtually all work in media analysis is this last part--trying to study carefully just what the media product is and whether it conforms to obvious assumptions about the nature and structure of the media.
Well, what do you find? First of all, you find that there are different media which do different things, like the entertainment/Hollywood, soap operas, and so on, or even most of the newspapers in the country (the overwhelming majority of them). They are directing the mass audience.
There is another sector of the media, the elite media, sometimes called the agenda-setting media because they are the ones with the big resources, they set the framework in which everyone else operates. The New York Times and CBS, that kind of thing. Their audience is mostly privileged people. The people who read the New York Times--people who are wealthy or part of what is sometimes called the political class--they are actually involved in the political system in an ongoing fashion. They are basically managers of one sort or another. They can be political managers, business managers (like corporate executives or that sort of thing), doctoral managers (like university professors), or other journalists who are involved in organizing the way people think and look at things.
The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching the Associated Press, who grind out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says "Notice to Editors: Tomorrow's New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page." The point of that is, if you're an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don't have the resources to figure out what the news is, or you don't want to think about it anyway, this tells you what the news is. These are the stories for the quarter page that you are going to devote to something other than local affairs or diverting your audience. These are the stories that you put there because that's what the New York Times tells us is what you're supposed to care about tomorrow. If you
Chomsky has written about it as well
Published on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 by The International News
Starving The Poor
by Noam Chomsky
The chaos that derives from the so-called international order can be painful if you are on the receiving end of the power that determines that order's structure. Even tortillas come into play in the ungrand scheme of things. Recently, in many regions of Mexico, tortilla prices jumped by more than 50 per cent.
In January, in Mexico City, tens of thousands of workers and farmers rallied in the Zocalo, the city's central square, to protest the skyrocketing cost of tortillas.
In response, the government of President Felipe Calderon cut a deal with Mexican producers and retailers to limit the price of tortillas and corn flour, very likely a temporary expedient.
In part the price-hike threat to the food staple for Mexican workers and the poor is what we might call the ethanol effect -- a consequence of the US stampede to corn-based ethanol as an energy substitute for oil, whose major wellsprings, of course, are in regions that even more grievously defy international order.
In the United States, too, the ethanol effect has raised food prices over a broad range, including other crops, livestock and poultry.
The connection between instability in the Middle East and the cost of feeding a family in the Americas isn't direct, of course. But as with all international trade, power tilts the balance. A leading goal of US foreign policy has long been to create a global order in which US corporations have free access to markets, resources and investment opportunities. The objective is commonly called "free trade," a posture that collapses quickly on examination.
It's not unlike what Britain, a predecessor in world domination, imagined during the latter part of the 19th century, when it embraced free trade, after 150 years of state intervention and violence had helped the nation achieve far greater industrial power than any rival.
The United States has followed much the same pattern. Generally, great powers are willing to enter into some limited degree of free trade when they're convinced that the economic interests under their protection are going to do well. That has been, and remains, a primary feature of the international order.
The ethanol boom fits the pattern. As discussed by agricultural economists C Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, "the biofuel industry has long been dominated not by market forces but by politics and the interests of a few large companies," in large part Archer Daniels Midland, the major ethanol producer. Ethanol production is feasible thanks to substantial state subsidies and very high tariffs to exclude much cheaper and more efficient sugar-based Brazilian ethanol. In March, during President Bush's trip to Latin America, the one heralded achievement was a deal with Brazil on joint production of ethanol. But Bush, while spouting free-trade rhetoric for others in the conventional manner, emphasized forcefully that the high tariff to protect US producers would remain, of course along with the many forms of government subsidy for the industry.
Despite the huge, taxpayer-supported agricultural subsidies, the prices of corn -- and tortillas -- have been climbing rapidly. One factor is that industrial users of imported US corn increasingly purchase cheaper Mexican varieties used for tortillas, raising prices.
The 1994 US-sponsored NAFTA agreement may also play a significant role, one that is likely to increase. An unlevel-playing-field impact of NAFTA was to flood Mexico with highly subsidised agribusiness exports, driving Mexican producers off the land.
Mexican economist Carlos Salas reviews data showing that after a steady rise until 1993, agricultural employment began to decline when NAFTA came into force, primarily among corn producers -- a direct consequence of NAFTA, he and other economists conclude. One-sixth of the Mexican agricultural
I read your post. I have done research on the topic. It didn't change a single bit of what I was trying to say.
I was elaborating on what would be a silly concept of if it was actually literal to our current meaning of terrorism.
It's called humor.
Obviously it has nothing to do with terrorism, or terroristic.
Unless the targets he planned on shooting were to urge a political change. Or he told the paper targets before hand that he was coming to get them unless they used recyclable paper.
Maybe the person who told on him wasn't actually a person, but instead of a picture of Osama Bin Laden with a bullseye over the nose.
First they came for the web comic artists, and I did not speak out.
excellent movie
That's weird. I know people in China, and they are considered quite wealthy with government jobs, and they pull in 7k a year. They don't seem particularly well off to me. Maybe that's a big step below.
The sports games are not anywhere near up to standards yet. That's the area I'd take the biggest hit with in quality, and they still are not worth it.
I am hoping for a better turnout this year.
I'm a sports game fan, and all of the sports games look pretty bad for it. I think Puzzle Quest will be the first game I go out and get, it looks fun.
The only one on your list I might get otherwise is Ratchet and Clank, and that's solely because of the good rating from IGN. I've never played it before, and am generally not into those games, but it will be better than anything else i have on there.
I just started adding RSS feeds, and videos, so I'll probably get much more use out of it now. Just needed a reason, and my first post started it.
I have Pirates on pc. I looked at those games, and none of them seemed fun to me.
Although I think I'm going to buy Puzzle Quest tonight. That looks awesome.
I didn't buy it, it was a gift. But yeah, just trying to troll here, or something.
I have a PSP. I've used it one time when I got it in another state, and used it during the flight.
And that was when I wasn't using my IPOD. I have movies which I've watched already, and a few games that suck.
What am I supposed to do with this thing? I don't really care to learn the ins and outs of firmware, but playing old PS games would be awesome. I might actually use it then, so how do I go about figuring that out?
It just sits there. I have money to buy games, but nothing looks remotely good.
Fool me once... uh... uh.... shame on you.
uh.... A fooled man can't get fooled again.